Most-Healthful Apps

Published Online: December 13, 2012

An estimated 15,000 mobile healthcare applications are available for healthcare workers and consumers, and the number of mobile-device users who've downloaded one of those apps doubled over the past year. However, even with all of that astounding innovation and activity, what's been tried and true has also retained value in this fast-moving world of today's smartphones and slick Web-enabled tablet computers.

Epocrates, initially a drug reference tool, and one of the few remaining healthcare information technology survivors of the implosion of the dot-com bubble more than a decade ago, was chosen—far and away—as the top choice in Modern Healthcare's inaugural Most Important Mobile Healthcare Apps competition, according to a survey of our readers, with help from members of two leading healthcare information technology organizations. Those groups are the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems, a professional association of physician informaticists, and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, a professional association of hospital chief information officers.